Oooh my art teacher showed stuff from that youtube guy...to think I was only using paint to draw Pokemon when I was a kid (with a mouse). That drawing is lost to time but I remember drawing pikachu and pidgeot pixel by pixel. This guy obviously had a tablet XD

The thing that gets me about digital art is that my hand eye coordination isn't as great yet---looking at the computer screen while the tablet is flat in front of the monitor is much harder than paper and pencil (where you can see what your hand is drawing on the surface). They have more expensive tablets that allow you to draw on "directly", here but they're $2,000. I'm saving that for a camera D:

There was a video of a person drawing a portrait in 30 seconds. That was epic XD

which really helps create shades and smooths things out. You can also use your fingers but graphite is hard to come off from your fingers sometimes and you can leave oil on the paper from your fingers. Tissues can also work but they can leave stuff behind. Tortillons are also more precise than fingers.

In charcoal, I use a chamois cloth/fingers to blend. A chamois cloth works almost like an eraser with charcoals (so be careful, it can take a lot more off than you were intending to). But over time, it gets dirty and stops working well.

To get darker shades with pencils, increase the pressure of the pencil, to get lighter shades...opposite. Be sure to use soft pencil leads so you don't gouge your paper.

For paints, it's hard to explain in a sentence but it involves the choice of colors.